This is a *very* good interview defining the term "emotional labor", with Prof. Hochschild, who introduced the term. It speaks to my feeling that the term is applied to scenarios it's not suited best for:

"It seems like this is mostly becoming a popular term in feminist conversations. But if we talk about all the unpaid labor women do in the home as “emotional labor,” we’re insinuating that any kind of labor that falls most often to a woman is “emotional.”"